The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1887-06-22

to the fearful bridge at the inquisition
palace In Venice than that poor little
span, for on this wooden jetty congre-
gate not merely the jail-birds of Gotham
on the way to the penitentiary, but
the insane, the sick, the paupers, and
even the babes abandoned by their moth
ers. / had almost added the unknown
and unclaimed dead, also, for their last
moment on Manhattan shores is spent
not fifty feet away, at the dead house in
Bellevue Hospital yard.
If we had not this poetic Italian sug-
gestion of name we might call this end
of Twenty-sixth street New York's
Chamber of Horrors. Nowhere else Is
there such concentration of misery as
at the Twenty-sixth street pier. Sick
ness, sin, poverty, insanity and death are
its patrons The great city hospital,
with its 500 suffering inmates, is the
next-door neighbor to the wharf; next
TO that is the morgue, and opposite both
Is medical college where dissection Is
practiced upon the bodies that are fed to
science under the devouring scalpels of
the students. Here, too, on the second
story of the morgue Is what Is called DR.
Woods museum, especially peculiar be-
cause it Is supposed no woman ever
visited it-a sorry but no doubt instruc-
tive collection of malformations,
monstrosities, the eccentricitics Of
morbid snatomy and the revelations
of surgery. The wharf is an ordinary
one one, covered, bnt mainly omen and always
very clean and attractive. There is as
much hustle and stir over the prepare
tions for starting the boat that lies warped
at the side of the pier as over the de-
parture of one OF the great sound steam
ers on the Boston routes. This boat Is
the Minnehannouck, the ferryboat that
rids us every day of the accumulation of
misery and crime of each twenty-four
hours. II belongs TO the department of
charities and correction, and plies be-
tween this pier and the institutions UNI
der the same branch of the government
the Charity Hospital, Penitentiary, Aims
house, Work-hous and Insane Asylum on
Blackwells Island, the Inebriate end
Lunatic Asylum on Wards Island, the
House of Refuge, idiot Asylum and
Founding Asylum on Randalps Island.
II is q trim and tidy little steamer,
different In no way from any of the pas
senger boats that carry us to the suburbs
and watering places. The starting time
is half-past ten o'clock, but long before
that moment it is boarded by number
Of women in clean suits of bed-ticking
and carrying swabs and pails-the same
sort of women that are seen to be busy
sweeping the pier and cleaning the quar-
ters OF the clerks and officials. Though
these women are dressed alike they do
not appear to belong to any particular
class. Some look vicious, some are old
and blotched and dsfgured as by drink,
and others are fair and wholesome-lo
ing. They are called "ten-day women"
because they are under sentence for that
length of time, for drunkenness, for fight
ing and for disorderly conduct In all of
its forms. Some are honest but ill
tempered wives, some are tippling but
not otherwise vicious women, and some
are of that outcast race to name whose
sex casts odium on the better half OF
humanity, 1t is compliment TO
be selected and trusted TO do this
work, and indeed these unfortunates
do great part of the washing, scrub
bling and sweeping of the buildings
under the charge of the department.
But it is compliment to them only as